IEEE Sections Congress 2008 Presentations

Article Courtesy of our IEEE East Tennessee Section

The IEEE Sections Congress 2008 website has been updated to include material presented in Quebec City. All the presentations are available to be downloaded individually or as a group.

Core Track Training Material - The Core Training presentations explained the impetus for the MGA transition and provided a view of what MGA success will look like. MGA is about putting members first and at the center of IEEE. The guiding principles summarize it all: IEEE is the member and the member is IEEE. The MGA Board is a complete change from RAB and a shift in focus to the member. Sections are now part of an organization focused solely on the member and designed to inspire members’ participation in IEEE. The stage is being set for MGA to be the primary touch point for IEEE members, engaging them throughout their careers and providing them with what they need, when they need it, to be successful in their profession. Secti! on Chairs are being called to help support IEEE and act as the key point of contact for their members.

Membership Breakout Sessions - The growth and nurturing of our 375,000+ members is a core value of IEEE. The material presented in this track focuses on how a member’s relationship with IEEE can be enhanced through local engagement. Geographic unit leaders will be trained on the benefits of IEEE membership, and how to communicate and apply these benefits to the needs of members in their local area. Material presented also includes best practices for using the IEEE Membership Development tools, staff and volunteer network. Leveraging these resources will ultimately lead to significantly increased retention, recruitment and recovery of members at the local Section level.

Section/Chapter Activities Breakout Sessions - The success of IEEE depends on the continued cooperation between geographic units at the local level. This material presented in this track focuses on how to promote and facilitate the delivery of technical, professional and educational material. Issues cover a broad range of topics such as learning how to leverage Standards; acknowledging contributions of members through awards and recognition; learning about new humanitarian projects supported by IEEE and its members; and working with students and student branches. Activities your Section can undertake to enhance its image and support IEEE are also discussed.

Section Management Breakout Sessions - Running a successful Section requires having the tools and support to do the job. The material presented in this track provides information on obtaining support and resources from the IEEE organization and discusses best practices to follow. Several sessions address how to manage activities such as finances, conferences and affinity groups. Effective practices for planning successful meetings, volunteer recruitment and leadership development are also covered. New tools for supporting the volunteer administrative responsibilities will also be introduced.

SC08 Recommendations - The highlight of every Sections Congress is when delegates develop and vote on recommendations that IEEE will address in order to best serve the needs of its members. The Top ten recommendations, as ranked by the primary Section Delegates, are available.

Highlights from IEEE Sections Congress via IEEE.tv - The following video highlights from the IEEE Sections Congress and the IEEE Honors Ceremony are available via IEEE.tv.

* 2008 Sections Congress Highlights - Inspire, Enable, Empower and Engage
* 2008 Sections Congress Opening Highlights
* 2008 Honors Ceremony Program
* Profile of 2008 Medal of Honor winner Gordon Moore

See more on IEEE.tv

IEEE Seeks Volunteers for Humanitarian Technology Challenge

The Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) is a partnership between IEEE and the United Nations Foundation designed to bring together technical professionals and humanitarians to develop technological solutions for pressing challenges facing humanity.
A small number of IEEE members are needed to help shape the early stages of the program, working with humanitarians to further detail challenge definitions and outline a solution process. This is a unique opportunity for IEEE volunteers experienced in systems engineering to work directly with prominent humanitarian volunteers.
The following initial challenges were identified by focus groups composed of representatives from ten humanitarian organizations:

• Reliable Electricity – Availability of power for electronic devices
• Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices -- Capability of exchanging data among remote field offices and central health facilities
• Local Management and Tracking of Supply Distribution – Ensure that supplies are getting to the people that need them in order to maximize the impact of assistance
• Incident Tracking – Determine locations and extent of medical problems in order to focus resources
• Patient ID and Tie to Health Records – Maintain consistent patient records, including when patients visit different clinics and when they relocate.

IEEE volunteers should be experienced in the application of technology to solve humanitarian issues and be willing to commit approximately two to four hours per week to the project. A conference call/webcast for early stage volunteers is scheduled to take place in late November, 2008. This will be followed by an in-person conference scheduled for the first quarter of 2009, where additional volunteers will be needed.
For more information, visit the HTC Web site (www.ieee.org/go/htc). Interested volunteers should contact Harold Tepper, IEEE HTC Project Manager, at h.tepper@ieee.org .

IEEE Hampton Roads PES?

Could there be a IEEE Power & Engineering Society (PES) – Hampton Roads Chapter? Yes if you help to establish it. The IEEE Power & Energy Society (recently renamed from the Power Engineering Society) or PES is the oldest society in IEEE and consists of 21,550 members. Hampton Roads is home to 169 of those members. The fields of interest in this society are in the research, development, installation and operation of systems for the generation, transmission, distribution, measurement and control of electric energy. PES provides the world’s largest forum for sharing the latest in technological developments in the electric power industry and for creating standards for the development and construction of equipment and systems.
As a chapter technical presentations can be more focused on subjects that matter most to its members. Chapters have their own officers: chair, vice-chair, secretary, and treasurer. If you are interested in establishing a IEEE Power & Engineering Society – Hampton Roads Chapter please contact Kurt Clemente or James Bolitho.

November Letter from the Chair

Thanks to all who made it to last month’s IEEE meeting at Barclay’s. Adeeb Hamzey of Virginia Power (and a friend and colleague from the IEEE Richmond section) gave a very interesting talk about the past two decades of electrical generation and transmission in Virginia. His experience in this field lent insight into the improvements that have been made, but also the issues that face the industry: attracting, developing and retaining electrical engineering talent, developing new generation sources to keep up with growing demand, and installing transmission lines to move the power around the state, to name a few. We are very appreciative of Adeeb, who took the time to answer numerous questions from the group during his presentation.
Next month we host Bernie Wright of General Electric, who will discuss issues of selective coordination. I will refer you to the meeting abstract for more information on the topic, but suffice it to say that this topic will be of great interest to power engineers to whom the increased requirements of the 2008 National Electric Code present a growing challenge for building electrical system design. General Electric obviously provides electrical equipment that can be used to meet these new requirements, but understanding the specifics of how an uncoordinated electrical system can create power disruption problems (and unhappy building occupants) is something that all members of IEEE should appreciate. Engineers must design safe electrical systems, but the new selective coordination requirements go much further to require greater service reliability at significant additional cost.
We meet this month in the Clark-Nexsen conference room, a new venue to IEEE-Hampton Roads. Please note that we will be serving pizza and charging $5 for members/non-members but admitting IEEE student members for free! It is important that you RSVP for this meeting as we will be ordering the food ahead of time. If you are an IEEE student member please provide your IEEE member # - if you cannot locate your number you may email any officer who can utilize SamIEEE to obtain this information.
Our November meeting brings us to officer elections for 2008. I greatly appreciate the assistance of James, Jim and Giuliano in their efforts as Vice-Chair, Treasurer and Secretary throughout the year; we would not have been as successful without their diligence and hard work. If you would like to be considered for a position, or would like to nominate an IEEE member for an officer positions, please do so at the November meeting. We will open the floor to nominees and conduct the election at the meeting, as this will be our last section-wide technical meeting for 2008. The opportunity is a tremendous one, and need not take up too much of your time (I know we are all busy). Please consider volunteering or nominating another IEEE member, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Upcoming meetings:

• IEEE-HR monthly technical meeting November 20th at Clark-Nexsen
• IEEE-HR Executive Committee meeting December 11th
• IEEE-HR monthly technical meeting January 22nd Annual Student Paper Competition
• IEEE-HR monthly technical meeting February 19th
• IEEE-HR monthly technical meeting March 19th

This month’s meeting will conclude our Fall 2008 technical program. I hope you are finding the meetings interesting and valuable to your career and continued pursuit of knowledge in the electrical/electronics field. For those who are licensed engineers, we know you are thinking about the required Professional Development Hours and have plans to help you gain (and document!) these in 2009 when the state board is expected to roll out the new requirements. We continue to consider starting a Power & Energy (formerly Power Engineering) chapter, which would allow us to offer more focused presentations of several hours in duration to meet these requirements. For those of you in the communications and electro-optics field, we are also considering a Computer Society chapter and Dr. Dharamsi continues his good efforts in our local LEOS (laser and electro-optic society) chapter. IEEE societies present an avenue to provide greater depth and detail on technical presentations than we could possibly achieve in our monthly 1-hour meetings, and I encourage you to express interest if you would like to assist in these. In the meantime, we will continue to seek out interesting and varied technical topics for our regular section meetings. If you have a suggested topic or speaker (or might want to present something yourself) please speak with me or any IEEE officer about this. I look forward to seeing you November!
Regards,
Kurt Clemente, PE
2008 Chair
Hampton Roads Section

kurt.clemente@ieee.org

November Meeting

Selective Coordination of Electrical Over Current Protection

Bernie Wright, General Electric

Thursday, 20 November 2008 at 6:30 PM

Clark-Nexsen
6160 Kempsville Circle, Suite 200A
Norfolk, VA 23502
+1 757.455.5800

Meal Cost (Pizza and soft drinks): Members and guests $5; Students FREE
Presentation: Free

The National Electric Code (NEC) defines selective coordination as the “localization of an over current condition to restrict outages to the circuit or equipment affected, accomplished by the choice of over current protective devices and their ratings or settings.” In a well-coordinated electrical system faults are isolated by having only the closest upstream breaker or fuse operate, leaving the rest of the electrical system in operation. Selective coordination requirements have increased with successive revisions of the NEC (NFPA-70) and as of 2008 cover 5 scenarios: health care facility essential systems, multi-elevator systems, emergency systems, legally-required standby systems and critical operation power systems. Achieving selective coordination requires the design engineer to carefully study the ratings of numerous components, as well as coordinate with the electric utility to understand the characteristics of the supply system.

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